In recent years, there are proposed and practically used various automatic brake control devices for preventing a collision by performing an automatic brake control independent of a driver's brake operation when a subject vehicle is very likely to come into conflict with a control target such as a preceding vehicle. For example, PTL 1 discloses a technique of an automatic brake control device which recognizes a control target in front of the subject vehicle based on a front road environment captured by a camera, sets a brake intervention distance based on a relative relation between the subject vehicle and the control target, determines the execution of the brake control when the relative distance between the subject vehicle and the control target is equal to or less than the brake intervention distance so as to intervene in the automatic brake.
In addition, PTL 2 discloses a vehicle movement control method in which an input lateral jerk (Gy_dot) of the vehicle is multiplied by a gain (KGyV) which is determined from a speed (V) and a lateral acceleration (Gy) and stored in advance, a control command to control the longitudinal acceleration of the vehicle is generated based on the multiplied value, and the generated control command is output. According to this method, since a locus of a resultant acceleration vector (G) of the longitudinal acceleration and the lateral acceleration is vectored to draw a smooth curve in a coordinate system in which the gravity center of the vehicle is fixed, it is called G-Vectoring control (GVC). According to the GVC, it is reported that an emergency avoidance performance is significantly improved (NPL 1).
In addition, PTL 2 discloses a vehicle movement control system which includes a means for detecting a speed (V) in a longitudinal direction of the vehicle and a means for training a jerk (Gy_dot) in a lateral direction of the vehicle, and controls the yaw moment of the vehicle based on a value obtained by subtracting the jerk from the speed. This method is not a feedback control following a model in which the yaw moment is controlled based on lateral slide information of the vehicle and a difference between the yaw movement of the vehicle and a predicted yaw movement of a standard model becomes small. A turning promoting yaw moment generated by a steering and an innate recovery yaw moment of the vehicle are added with a slight assist moment, and thus it is called Moment+ (M+) (NPL 2). For example, as disclosed in PTL 3, an inter-electrical-axle torque generating apparatus (yaw moment generator) may be used for the yaw moment control.
When the M+ control is used, it is possible to improve the turning performance of the vehicle at a low acceleration/deceleration compared to the GVC. For example, when the electrical yaw moment generator of PTL 3 is used, an inter-axle torque difference (that is, a so-called counter torque) can be generated, the yaw moment can be directly added to the vehicle, and the acceleration/deceleration is not generated in the vehicle. In addition, in a case where different decelerating forces are applied to the right and left wheels using a lateral slide preventing apparatus (Electronic Stability Control: ESC) which is recently required to be mounted so as to apply the yaw moment to the vehicle, the deceleration is generated.
However, the deceleration is small compared to the GVC, and the longitudinal and lateral accelerations are changed in a linked manner by the similar profile (appropriate proportion to a vehicle lateral jerk) as the GVC, so that a response performance of the vehicle can be improved without a sudden deceleration caused by the ESC intervention.